The Waning Usability of GoDaddy
Jul 30th, 07 |Over the past year or so, I’ve had growing frustrations with GoDaddy, and as a result I’ve gradually discontinued many of the services I once used and recommended. This weekend, I finally decided to offload my last hosting account with them (a rather dusty personal blog) to a Wordpress.com account.
The problem with ignoring something for a long time is that when you’re ready to get it done, you’re almost guaranteed to run into time-sinks. For me, it was discovering that I was locked out of my account! At first I thought maybe I changed my password and just didn’t remember. Not likely, but possible. So I reset the password and tried again. Still a no-go.
By now I’m really annoyed, so I call. Tech Guy X tries to explain that because I recently added a credit card to my file, the system must’ve locked me out for not having a strong enough password. Um, yeah. I’ve been a customer of GoDaddy for a very long time (7yrs), and never had a situation like that before. But whatever. He unlocked my account, and for something that should’ve taken 60 seconds or less, I spent 20 minutes. Thankfully, Wordpress made it easy to get my data moved with the export feature, so I recouped some time. ;)
It seems to me GoDaddy’s service is on a steady declination. In my time with them I’ve seen them add a lot of [fluff] products, spend a fortune on Superbowl advertising, and send out plenty of periodic “newsletters”, but I can’t recall a single true realign of their site ever. I can’t remember ever getting a newsletter with real tips in it. Whatever happened to improving the products or services you already offer? Why scramble for short-term volume when you could have passive longevity? Word of mouth is powerful.
Regardless what products you use, the management interface is convoluted, and everything is geared to sell sell sell. Even the purchase process itself. Singling out the home page - it’s littered with graphics, buttons and banners, and the entire focal point is a chick in black leather. I also counted nine exclamation points. Good grief! Kinda loses it’s punch with that many doesn’t it?
There’s a bunch more stuff buried in menus, which are themselves much too much. The Domain drop-down, by the way, is longer than my laptop’s browser window, so I can’t even access the last few links without scrolling.
It also takes no less than four clicks (and a new tab) to edit any of the settings for say, a hosting account. Six if you need to get into your database! Why?
I really don’t mean to bag on GoDaddy. I’ve purchased all my domains through them, and over the years tried a variety of other services, including a virtual dedicated server and even the reseller program. While I was using the VDS, their service was quite good. I was assigned a personal rep, and got regular phone calls asking if there was anything they could help me with (add to my account). Too bad I got nada when I needed real tech support for managing my server.
While I will continue to purchase domains through them (they’re so cheap it’s hard to go anywhere else), I will not be hosting any more sites, and I can’t confidently recommend their services anymore. Sorry GoDaddy, but thanks for the memories.
